Scenes from Doug Jones’s Unlikely Victory Party in Alabama

Doug Jones spoke for just a few minutes, and ended by quoting Martin Luther King, Jr.

Photograph by Dina Litovsky / Redux for The New Yorker

Around 9 P.M., at the Sheraton Birmingham Hotel, where Doug Jones was
having what many had imagined would turn into a pity party celebrating a
close-but-not-quite bid to become Alabama’s next senator, it was still
quiet. There was a lot of staring at smartphones, much of it focussed on
the live predictions being offered by the Times, which, around that
time, began showing numbers favoring Jones. The crowd could be heard to
buzz, a little. Amateur interpretations of the numbers were offered,
tempered by memories of “what happened to Hillary.” The math whizzes
were still sober, and somewhat skeptical. One man said he still felt “snake-bit” after last November.

“The predicted margin of victory was all the way up to eight points for Jones,” a woman said, holding her phone out for all to see. “Now it’s 3.9. Going the wrong way.” She paused. “But still good.”

Then, twenty minutes later, Harlan Jones, a fifty-five-year-old
African-American from Massachusetts who had been in Alabama knocking on
doors for the past few weeks, piped up. “He’s won,” Jones said. “It’s
over.” The prediction models now seemed to him, and, soon, to others,
irrefutable. Jones added, “When I saw the image of Roy Moore prancing
around onstage with his little gun and his cowboy outfit, when he beat
Luther Strange, I thought, The Democrats can steal this thing. And they
just did. There’s a Democratic Party in this state, if they don’t let
this thing fall apart.”

Confetti fell from the ceiling. Doug Jones came out, on what turned out
to be his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and did his best to assure
the people in the crowd that he was worthy of the work they’d put in. He talked about
dignity, respect, and “a fair shake in life.” He quoted Martin Luther
King, Jr. Five minutes later, he was gone, and the crowd let itself
fully indulge in the moment.

A cluster of young men began to do the Wobble in front of the stage.
D.J. Rob, who controlled the playlist in a corner of the room, told me that
he was now “two for two” in d.j.ing winning election parties in the
state. “I’m just saying that I haven’t lost,” he said.

By 10 P.M., the bourbon was gone, or well hidden. For those chasing a
long and loopy night, it was on to the blended Canadian whiskey. D.J.
Rob had plenty of songs left: Peter Gabriel, Bill Withers, and, why not,
“Macarena.” As he told me, “You never know, you might only get one
chance to d.j. a party for a winning Democrat senator from Alabama.”